When I was eight years old I would run down the length of our driveway and jump to see if I could fly. I so wanted to be Superman that I convinced the two kids living next door, Carol and her younger brother Johnny, to play Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. I’d jump from rocks on the hill to save them.
I never did fly, but I do work for a great metropolitan newspaper. To be honest, the Sonoma Valley Sun is a very good but not yet a great newspaper nor is Sonoma Valley metropolitan, but hey, I’m not Clark Kent, either. I’m just a 78-year old kid from the New York suburbs who finds himself in world that needs all kinds of help.
The Superman motif is nestled somewhere between Neizche’s Ubermensch and the Buddhist Bodhisattva, and it psychologically compensates for the shamed childhood psyche inflicted by my older brother. When I took my Bodhisattava vows twenty years ago, Lama Dawa Choddak Rimpoche bestowed a Bodhisattva name upon me: Sonam Tobgyal, King of Virtuous Action. At the time, I was the Mayor of Sonoma, which may have influenced his decision. Whatever the cause, he’d picked up on my Superman motif and I vowed to live up to my Bodhisattva name.
Placing the welfare of others before oneself is the practice of a Bodhisattva, not to mention the duty of Superman. Given that the needs of others is endless, it ain’t an easy practice and my training will last for endless Kalpas, each one of them 432 billion years long. But what the hell; in for a dime, in for a dollar.
My training included caring for my wife of 50 years when late in her life she endured the years-long suffering of breast cancer treatment, multiple surgeries and four joint replacements. I helped my increasingly paranoid 91-year-old father cross the finish line, too. He asked me to come over one day to talk about the hit men the son of his late wife had hired to kill him. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve already called the police.” Yeah, Dad, terrific.
And then there’s the welfare of our community and the nearly twenty years of unpaid public office and time on the Planning Commission. That’s been excellent training too. When I became a council member in 1994 we discovered that the City was flat broke and had to get a bank credit line just to make its payroll. Nice.
As Mayor, I learned to hold my seat calmly while members of the public poured out their fears and frustrations that sometimes veered loudly into abusive complaints. I realized that being Mayor is like being elected lightening rod and letting high-voltage public outbursts pass through me without feeling burnt to a crisp was a valuable power to cultivate. Superman indeed.
Now in my dotage, my will is strong but my flesh is weaker. Even Superman gets old. Impatience is my Kryptonite and the Laws of Nature my Fortress of Solitude. As I now help my daughter and her family recover from her stroke, I’m using every skill and superpower I have left.
Oh yeah, and then there’s that great metropolitan newspaper to take care of, the Sonoma Valley Sun; and you know – truth, justice and the American way!
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